


swallow the roar in your throat (you have words, a life, a duty)

by TolkienGirl



Category: Tell Me What You Saw | 본대로 말하라
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, F/M, Flashbacks, Gen, Grief/Mourning, POV Second Person, Pining, Set around ep 6, Trauma, Yes I ship them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-26
Updated: 2020-02-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:07:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22903699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: (You could see her face through the window. But even then, even while she was the one who was dying—she, who had been your friend—You were looking at him.)
Relationships: Oh Hyeon-Jae & Hwang Hwa-Young, Oh Hyeon-Jae/Han Isu
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	swallow the roar in your throat (you have words, a life, a duty)

You do not pry overmuch. You’re still (nearly) his only friend. When you first learned, Dr. Ahn answered your sparing inquiries. The rest, you can now surmise.

You’ve known him such a long, long time.

(You could see her face through the window. But even then, even while she was the one who was dying—she, who had been your friend—

You were looking at him.)

_Down the hall of memory is the acrid scent of oil clinging to your hair, your skin. Your eyes are still sore from the shock and from weeping, when you visit him the first time._

_His face wasn’t ruined, but it was scarred. You see_ that _even before the bandages. The casts. The printed gown that has never—should never—_

_Hyeon Jae’s eyes are closed. Yours are, too. You wipe away tears with the back of your hand._

_You used to watch him sleep, tilted in a chair with his boots on your desk. Awake at the drop of a pin: all wary, feline arrogance. All savage wit and beautiful knowledge. You smiled fiercely to yourself in those days, when the work made you inseparable._

_There has never been any purpose, in putting a name to that feeling. You held it close regardless, when young._

_Standing at the door of his hospital room, you find you have no purpose at all._

When life orders both of you to wait for resolution, it is easier to talk about the young detective than about anything else. She does not yet know what to do with her mind. Hyeon Jae has an idea or two, by the most modest estimate. (The most modest estimate is never his.)

Hyeon Jae has taken an interest in her. This interest is neither kind nor unkind, modest nor immodest.

It simply is.

_Time passes. You visit, doggedly. Isu is dead and buried. At the funeral, you mourned her. Of course you mourned her._

_She was your friend._

_(You could see her face. You were not looking at it closely, because you were looking at him. Now you will see it for the rest of your life.)_

_Nothing has changed._

A blue fly, its body shimmering, has died upon the windowsill. The day is carelessly bright. The monster who killed and killed and killed hides under this same sun, but for now, Hyeon Jae faces paper-thin questioning from the same papered-over authorities.

You lift a stack of files from your desk. Though you don’t need them, you run your gaze over the top report. _He’s_ watching you from the corner of his eye, and you won’t give him the satisfaction of seeing you shaken.

Shaken, by him. By the presence of him in his crow-black clothes, which he wore always, and so will not consider to be mourning now.

You ask, plainly, _What?_

( _What has not changed?_ )

 _They still despise cleverness_. He clasps his hands behind his back; he juts his jaw upward. _And skill._

 _They’ve always taken a narrow view._ You do not look at the way his hair falls soft on a stiff collar.

You want him to ask if you are angry, but he never will.

_Hyeon Jae cannot see, and will not walk. The doctors are cold with certainty._

_He does speak again, at last. Very little. The syllables are clipped, but perhaps that’s only because of the wire in his jaw._

_There’s a commotion outside one day; footsteps and a voice you both know._

_Hyeon Jae, here, is no longer himself. Not one speck; not one scar. Still, you like to think you know him._

_You like to think you understand, without being told, why he wouldn’t want to be seen by unfriendly eyes._

Blind _, the doctor said._ Blind _, the chart said._

You are almost pretty when you are going to kill someone _, the ghost said, smiling, flicking at one corner of your notebook with a pencil he had stolen._ Like a tigress _._

_You lock the door. You fill the narrow window with your glare._

No more visitors _, you mouth, into Na Joon Suk’s smooth, astonished, ungracious face._

 _You are reprimanded, later. Na Joon Suk, after all, has more powerful friends than you do. He stands at the edge of your desk the next day and simpers,_ Flowers, Ha-young. I was trying to bring flowers.

_You have another man whom you must hate more, a man who went up in flame. But you hate this man for what he hoped to find._

_To the ghost in the bed, that day, you say,_

I did not want them…

 _But he does not let you finish. He does not let you save him._ To see me?

 _Reluctantly:_ Yes.

You can see me. _He blinks into nothing. He does not soften his voice, his bitterness. He never smiles. You don’t know if he wants to die. He says,_ It is the same.

_You carry that hurt for years._

_I’m happy that you can walk and see._

The stillness that rests on him is as much a careful cloak as the effortless dark clothing, the tousled hair, the twist of his lips that is a scar all its own.

Even his eyes are hidden, watching you. You’ve known him such a long, long time.

 _Work hard_ , he says, light like the weight of a memory.

He leaves you, striding down the hall. Effortless.

You dare not put a name to the memory this is.


End file.
